Friday, February 24, 2006
The Bee-tch is back part 1
We started meeting in 2001. At that time I still worked in a lab, lived with Pi, and lead a very routinary life. She lived with her little girl's dad - they were calling it quits, actually - and was a housewife.
We lived in adjoining flats in the city centre; while Pi often used to have a cup of coffee with her in the morning - he had his "airbrush factory" set in a part of our flat, so he mostly worked at home - I rarely happened to see her, if not in the hall of the building. But oh, even that was enough...I couldn't stand her "age of Aquarius" manners, her flowerpower style. Most of all, I couldn't stand the fact that she wanted to convince us all that we would undoubtedly be destined to a horrible death if we didn't change our lifestyle. Not that she even remotedly knew what our lifestyle was, but maybe just wearing "normal" clothes and not shabby formless dresses was, for her, a sign of our incapability to lead a proper life. Let alone the fact that we didn't start our day with half an hour of indian chants, so we really had to be a couple of poor lost souls who needed to be saved.
Despite my reluctancy, she used to invite me for a cup of tea once a week. The grumpy me thought: Well, she's being nice and playing her "perfect neighbour" role, so why spoil her fun? And so we started our good-neighbourhood routine. And I learned my first (partial) lesson: never judge a book by the cover (though don't expect a cheap crappy novel to be a masterpiece, I should have added... but I'm anticipating the facts..)
During those tea-chats we both discovered something we hadn't seen at first. I found a really generous person, with a strong motherly attitude and a secret pain which I could only sense, then. I always soften when I see something hidden in the deep of a person. Especially pain. And so I couldn't help but change my mind slowly. As for me, she found a woman who managed with all odd jobs that frightened her so much (I'm quite a good plumber, electrician, mason and so on..) and who was so different from her usual friends... I didn't treat her as a moron, for a change..
In less than 6 months lots of things changed in our lives. We both separated from our men, I lost my job, found another lover and another job. She moved to a different flat and devoted herself to a man in Germany who broke her heart in tiny bleeding pieces, the crazy bloke. We became very close friends. I think we both clinged to our newborn friendship careless of the differences between us. She was so motherly and I was so firm and strong - except for sentimental matters, of course. We both needed a piece of the family we had never had. My mom was frequently ill and was never really able to be interested in both me and my brother until I was almost 24. Bee's father simply left her and her mom when she was not more than 3. They're still in touch, but he never really took care of her.
Soon we discovered that we shared a very strong passion for food, nutrition and cooking, and that we both thought life had to be lived in a "healthy" and spiritual way. I accepted her Indian chants and her messy house - the new was messier than the old one.. - and she accepted my tiny kitchen and my quiet and private way to live my
religious feelings.
We started developing a cooking project together, and spent hours cooking and experimenting just like happy scientists. We were so enthusiastic and energetic that our simple ideas soon took form of a real work.
We still had some quarrels - her little girl was a genuine pain in the ass, she broke thosands of things in my house, she even ruined a gold necklace my mommy gave me for my 30th birthday and she never ever scolded her. As some things run in the family, Bee succeded in breaking almost everything I lended her: a brand new iron (hers was already broken), an electric oven (her third flat had no oven) and so on.
But I was in such a pain then (guess what? I was dying for a man..) and she was oh so generous in taking care of me... I felt that something wasn't working the right way but our little project was oh so important for me... that I simply thought that feelings were much more important than things, our common desire to start cooking professionally was much more important than a broken oven..
She may have been unloyal and silly and you'll see how much of the both, but actually, in spite of all that happened afterwords, I still think this is one of the greatest lessons I've learnt from our friendship.
Feelings, when they're true, are always much more important than anything else.
--end of part one --
We lived in adjoining flats in the city centre; while Pi often used to have a cup of coffee with her in the morning - he had his "airbrush factory" set in a part of our flat, so he mostly worked at home - I rarely happened to see her, if not in the hall of the building. But oh, even that was enough...I couldn't stand her "age of Aquarius" manners, her flowerpower style. Most of all, I couldn't stand the fact that she wanted to convince us all that we would undoubtedly be destined to a horrible death if we didn't change our lifestyle. Not that she even remotedly knew what our lifestyle was, but maybe just wearing "normal" clothes and not shabby formless dresses was, for her, a sign of our incapability to lead a proper life. Let alone the fact that we didn't start our day with half an hour of indian chants, so we really had to be a couple of poor lost souls who needed to be saved.
Despite my reluctancy, she used to invite me for a cup of tea once a week. The grumpy me thought: Well, she's being nice and playing her "perfect neighbour" role, so why spoil her fun? And so we started our good-neighbourhood routine. And I learned my first (partial) lesson: never judge a book by the cover (though don't expect a cheap crappy novel to be a masterpiece, I should have added... but I'm anticipating the facts..)
During those tea-chats we both discovered something we hadn't seen at first. I found a really generous person, with a strong motherly attitude and a secret pain which I could only sense, then. I always soften when I see something hidden in the deep of a person. Especially pain. And so I couldn't help but change my mind slowly. As for me, she found a woman who managed with all odd jobs that frightened her so much (I'm quite a good plumber, electrician, mason and so on..) and who was so different from her usual friends... I didn't treat her as a moron, for a change..
In less than 6 months lots of things changed in our lives. We both separated from our men, I lost my job, found another lover and another job. She moved to a different flat and devoted herself to a man in Germany who broke her heart in tiny bleeding pieces, the crazy bloke. We became very close friends. I think we both clinged to our newborn friendship careless of the differences between us. She was so motherly and I was so firm and strong - except for sentimental matters, of course. We both needed a piece of the family we had never had. My mom was frequently ill and was never really able to be interested in both me and my brother until I was almost 24. Bee's father simply left her and her mom when she was not more than 3. They're still in touch, but he never really took care of her.
Soon we discovered that we shared a very strong passion for food, nutrition and cooking, and that we both thought life had to be lived in a "healthy" and spiritual way. I accepted her Indian chants and her messy house - the new was messier than the old one.. - and she accepted my tiny kitchen and my quiet and private way to live my
religious feelings.We started developing a cooking project together, and spent hours cooking and experimenting just like happy scientists. We were so enthusiastic and energetic that our simple ideas soon took form of a real work.
We still had some quarrels - her little girl was a genuine pain in the ass, she broke thosands of things in my house, she even ruined a gold necklace my mommy gave me for my 30th birthday and she never ever scolded her. As some things run in the family, Bee succeded in breaking almost everything I lended her: a brand new iron (hers was already broken), an electric oven (her third flat had no oven) and so on.
But I was in such a pain then (guess what? I was dying for a man..) and she was oh so generous in taking care of me... I felt that something wasn't working the right way but our little project was oh so important for me... that I simply thought that feelings were much more important than things, our common desire to start cooking professionally was much more important than a broken oven..
She may have been unloyal and silly and you'll see how much of the both, but actually, in spite of all that happened afterwords, I still think this is one of the greatest lessons I've learnt from our friendship.
Feelings, when they're true, are always much more important than anything else.
--end of part one --
